Your Views: Criticism of Parkview is unfair to Orfordville district

This letter is in response to one written by Bill Redmer on Oct. 17. Mr. Redmer continually berates Parkview School District, and all facts should be presented. Not just those that make his one-sided argument believable.

Mr. Redmer says the “meets expectations” label given by the state is just “smoke and mirrors.” He couldn’t be more wrong. Smoke and mirrors implies the district is creating the “illusion” of meeting expectations. In reality, the district meets all state expectations and is actually bordering on the “exceeds expectations” label.

This brings me to Mr. Redmer’s second fallacy. He claims the district received a D+ score from the state. This is woefully inaccurate. The Department of Public Instruction did not give letter grades when ranking the districts. The highest score given was 86.7, and therefore, the 67 received by Parkview puts it on the cusp of exceeding expectations, not nearly failing as Mr. Redmer would like you to believe.

When Mr. Redmer says that “years of improvements” were/will be thrown away, he is either misinformed or doesn’t care to give the facts. Two district buildings are unchanged from 1964. The washrooms don’t comply with Americans with Disabilities Act standards, and rooms are too small for their intended purposes (band, choir). Also, there is no space to hold revenue-generating events (show choir, athletic tournaments, youth sports, etc.) that other districts profit from.

Mr. Redmer is entitled to his opinion, but I feel the other citizens of the district deserve the truth.